Jubilee Trail (63 page)

“Oh John, I’ve missed you so!”

John’s hands tightened on hers. His eyes were eager as he searched her face. She wondered how she could ever have thought John’s eyes were cold. He said earnestly,

“Garnet, I’ve thought of you every day and night since I left you.”

All winter Garnet had tried to tell herself that she did not need to hear this, because she was already sure he loved her. But the minute she heard it she knew all her self-assurance had been a singing in the dark, for her spirit leaped so joyously at his words. John went on,

“I’ve never had the thought of anybody so constantly with me. It was always as if you were just out of sight, in the next room or beyond the next turn of the trail. And when I got that far and you weren’t there, I had such a strange sense of being alone—strange, I mean, because I’ve always preferred to be alone. But then of course, you’re the only woman I ever gave a damn about.”

As he spoke, she felt a wild glow of pleasure. And because she had not a shadow of subtlety in her, when he ceased speaking she said the first thing she wanted to say. “John, why did you wait so long to tell me this?”

He laughed silently. “Maybe it’s because I’m a fool, Garnet. Tell me, I could have said it before, couldn’t I? You did want me, didn’t you?”

“Want you? Oh John! If you knew how—”

Behind her Garnet heard the voices of Mr. Kerridge and the Handsome Brute, calling a welcome to John as they hurried out of the house to meet him. John said under his breath, “Oh, damn all these nice people,” as he let go of her hands and turned to greet his host. Mr. Kerridge was telling him that his room was waiting, and Doña Manuela was already calling the servants to bring him wine to drink and hot water to wash in. The men went in together, leaving Garnet resentful that Mr. Kerridge and the Brute could go with John to his room while she could not. But waves and waves of delight were breaking through her. John did want her. He was here with her at last, and she loved him.

John reappeared at supper, shaved and scrubbed, and dressed in a white shirt and black velveteen breeches laced up the sides with scarlet cords. After supper the adults of the household gathered in the parlor, where Mr. Kerridge had ordered the rare luxury of a fire. John was fresh from the scene of action and they had a lot of questions to ask.

The servants went about pouring wine and passing wafers. While the others discussed the war, Doña Manuela sipped and nibbled and dozed. Every now and then she roused herself with a start and shouted to one servant to bring more wood for the fire, to another servant to bring more wine, and to a third to brew some more cha for Doña Florinda—couldn’t the fools ever get it through their thick heads that the white-headed Yankee lady did not take wine? And she would be grateful if her son Arturo would bring her that bottle of angelica, and she would be even more grateful if his wife Carlota would stop rustling her skirts so people could hear what Don Juan Ives was saying. Everybody scurried to obey her. Doña Manuela sipped the sweet angelica and dozed off again, and Mr. Kerridge, with a quiet chuckle, asked John to go on with his story.

John told them about the battle at San Pascual, the march to San Diego, and the fighting along the San Gabriel River before the American army entered Los Angeles. He told them about General Kearny, who never flaunted his authority but who always got things done. With a cynical humor, John told them about Frémont.

Shortly after the American army entered Los Angeles, Frémont’s weary march had brought him to town with his battalion. Stockton had appointed Frémont civil governor. Both Stockton and Kearny had to leave Los Angeles, John explained, and go up to Monterey. Somebody had to be in Los Angeles to carry out their orders. But Frémont was showing no inclination to take orders from anybody, not even the general himself. Frémont had taken the biggest house in town for his residence, and was setting himself up as governor in fine style. John rather suspected that the boisterous gentleman was heading for trouble.

Since nobody in the family could understand English but Mr. Kerridge, John was speaking Spanish. At intervals he paused to make sure Garnet and Florinda were following him, and sometimes Florinda asked him to translate. Garnet did not interrupt him. She sat with her head bent over her crochet. The candlelight was hardly strong enough for such fine work, but she kept at it because it gave her something to look at besides John. Her eyes wanted to follow his every movement, in a way that would have betrayed what she was thinking as clearly as if she had spoken it aloud. But now and then she could not help looking up, and when she did John’s eyes would catch hers, and hold them with a brief intensity that she could feel almost like a kiss.

John told them the name of the northern village Yerba Buena had been changed to San Francisco. Florinda nodded with approval. “San Francisco,” she repeated. “That’s easier to say.”

John thought this was the reason the name had been changed. The village was growing fast; it now had close to four hundred people, nearly all of them Yankees, and they found the words Yerba Buena too much of a lip-twister. As the town stood at the edge of San Francisco Bay, the American alcalde had issued an order saying that hereafter the town was to have the same name as the bay.

John also told them that still more American soldiers had lately arrived. A battalion of Mormons had reached San Diego after an overland march, and they were going to garrison Los Angeles.

“Mormons?” Florinda repeated. “What are they?”

John explained to her in English. The Mormons were believers in a new religion, he said. They had been living mostly in Missouri and Illinois, but people of other faiths had come to dislike them violently, and last year about twenty thousand Mormons had been driven out of their homes. The elders of the church were now planning to take their people into the West, where they could set up their own community. On the outbreak of the war the Mormon leader Brigham Young had offered a battalion to President Polk. It was a canny move, John observed. Brigham Young wanted to prove the patriotism of the Mormons—whose enemies had been calling them anti-American—and also he wanted to have a lot of healthy young men in the West ready to join the Mormon colony after the war.

“How many of them are there?” Florinda asked.

“I’m not sure. Three or four hundred.”

She gave a satisfied smile, evidently counting the value of so many new customers at the bar, but John, with an amused glance at her, shook his head.

“They don’t drink,” he said.

Florinda stared in dismay. “What’s the matter with them?”

Garnet thought any other man would have made a bright remark about Florinda’s not drinking either, but John seldom said the obvious. He answered,

“Their church forbids it. Oh, I suppose some of them drink, there never was a church yet that could make all its members keep the rules, but generally they’re a very sober lot. However, the bar doesn’t need them. Silky is doing a thriving business.”

“Then he must have saved the whiskey!” Florinda exclaimed.

John nodded, and Florinda listened jubilantly while he told her about it. As Silky and Florinda rented the saloon from Mr. Abbott, Silky had adroitly figured that Mr. Abbott would not like to see them go broke. So he had left the whiskey in Mr. Abbott’s care. Mr. Abbott was married to a native woman and had three stalwart sons who were Angelenos by birth but who had a good share of their father’s Yankee enterprise. These three sons had seen to it that the saloon stayed locked up. Mickey had continued to live there, sleeping under the roof of the back porch, while Isabel supplied him with beans.

“And where did Mr. Abbott go during the troubles?” Florinda asked.

John chuckled. Mr. Abbott had not been on a horse in twenty years and no war could make him get on one now. When the other Yankees fled from Los Angeles Mr. Abbott had merely retired to an upper room of his own house. He closed the shutters, settled his huge bulk into an armchair, and while his family told people he had left town Mr. Abbott passed a pleasant winter reading the old American newspapers that he generally kept stacked on the counter of his store. Florinda laughed too. Then with a glance at Garnet she said,

“Oh yes, something else we’ve been wondering about. What’s become of our precious friend Charles?”

John asked the others to forgive him if he went on speaking English for a few minutes. There were some details Florinda had not understood. He said Charles had been very busy of late. Charles was a leading American ranchero and he had lost no time letting the American army know it. He had given the army considerable aid in the form of shelter and supplies, and shortly after they entered Los Angeles he had come there too, and had been bustling about importantly. “But he didn’t stay in Los Angeles long after the occupation,” John added. “He went north early in the year. Monterey, and probably San Francisco too.”

“What’s he doing up there?” Florinda asked.

“Oh, sniffing around,” said John. “A man never can tell when he might run into a good thing, you know.”

“Sure, I understand,” agreed Florinda. “Well, I hope he stays out of our place. He makes me think of an attic full of cobwebs.”

Doña Manuela woke up again. This time she announced that it was time for bed. It was, in fact, past midnight, long after their usual bedtime, so the others were quite willing to obey her.

Garnet and Florinda went to their room. But Garnet wanted to be by herself a while and think about John. She said she had a headache from crocheting in the dim light—which was true—and would like to get some fresh air before she went to bed. Wrapping a shawl around her she went down the corridor to the door leading out to the girls’ courtyard.

The court was chilly and rustling and very dark. There were stars overhead, but only a faint scrap of moon, and the trees had been planted thickly for daytime shade. Closing the door behind her, Garnet walked toward a group of lemon trees by the enclosing wall. The air was full of pungent odors, refreshing after the smoky parlor, and she liked the feel of the wind in her hair. On the wall the grapevines were swishing like taffeta petticoats. Breaking a leaf off a lemon tree Garnet crushed it in her hand and drew in a long breath of fragrance. Her foot touched a bench in the velvet blackness under the tree and she sat down, leaning back and singing a little tune. Alone in the dark she had a sense of freedom and privacy. She hoped Florinda was falling asleep.

Suddenly, beside her on the wall she heard a rustling like a gust of wind. Over her head the branches shook with a soft clatter, and a man swung down from the tree to the grass. Garnet had sprung to her feet, but before she could move away she heard him whisper, “It’s only me, Garnet—John.”

She could see him only as a thicker blackness in the dark. For an instant she shivered at the risk he was running, for Doña Manuela’s sons would not have hesitated to shoot at any male figure they saw prowling in the court that opened from their sisters’ bedrooms. “John!” she gasped. “Do you know where this is?”

“Why yes,” said John, “I’ve got no business being here.” His voice was so low that she could barely hear him above the rattling leaves, but she thought she would have recognized that note of cool amusement anywhere in the world. “I was crossing the outer court,” he went on, “when I heard somebody singing on this side of the wall. It could have been you, so I came close and listened. The words were English and the voice wasn’t Florinda’s, and I knew then it was you. So I scrambled over.” He laughed under his breath. “Most reprehensible. But I wanted so much to kiss you good night. Do you mind?”

He swept her into his arms and kissed her. For an instant Garnet was aware that the trees were murmuring around her and the wind was blowing John’s hair down over her eyes, and then she was not aware of anything except that now at last John was holding her close to him and she loved him. She loved the strength and fire and gentleness of him, and she wanted him to belong to her completely and forever.

She had no idea of time. But all at once the hall door began to bang in the wind. None of the doors had locks, and the latches were so flimsy that if you were not careful to catch them properly the doors would blow open at the first breeze. Garnet started at the noise, but John said “Sh!” and she stood still, his arm around her and his hand holding her head against his shoulder as he kissed her hair. An instant later they heard the voice of one of the little girls, roused by the banging door. A light shone from the far end of the corridor, and Doña Manuela’s voice called to the child that it was only the wind, and she was coming to shut the door herself.

John drew Garnet deeper into the blackness of the trees. His lips close to her ear, he whispered, “You aren’t frightened, are you? She can’t lock you out.”

Garnet began to laugh silently. She was so happy she could not help it. She whispered to John, “What will Doña Manuela do if she sees us?”

“Something violent, no doubt,” John said, and his words too were quivering with laughter. “But I don’t think she’ll see us. I can’t even see you myself.”

In the doorway appeared Doña Manuela’s vast figure, vaster than ever in the shawl she had thrown over her nightgown. Behind her was a servant girl carrying a candle. Luckily John and Garnet were over in a far corner, but Doña Manuela had heard a movement. “¿Quién está ahí?” she demanded loudly.

“Answer her,” John whispered. Garnet called back, giving her name and saying she had come out for some air.

Doña Manuela repeated her name sharply.

“Sí, señora,” said Garnet.

She was still laughing, though at the same time she felt a twinge of apprehension lest Doña Manuela snatch the candle and come waddling out. She did not know what would happen if John should be found with her. Probably they would both be sent off in disgrace. She would not have minded, if only she and John were sent together, but after Doña Manuela’s kindness she would have been sorry to seem careless of the rules of her house. Fortunately, however, the wind was cold, and Doña Manuela had drunk a lot of angelica and was very sleepy. She shouted to Garnet again, ordering her to come to bed at once before the night air gave her a string of ailments Garnet had never heard of before. Garnet answered that she was coming right in. The little girl was calling again, and Doña Manuela, giving the servant a poke with her elbow, turned around and started for the child’s room. “I must go now,” Garnet whispered to John.